Jan 9, 2007

Now this pisses me off no end

I know, I know, I said the media should shut up about Saddam, but I'm not the media. No-one of huge importance listens to me, so my criticism doesn't apply.

Now, I didn't agree with the Iraq war. I felt it was ill-conceived, badly timed and pointless. Billions would be spent on dealing with a contained threat who was going nowhere fast, while Osama and Zawahiri were legging it over the border to Pakistan.

That said, there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam is a bloody tyrant who should have died 26 years ago and spared the rest of the world the effort. He indirectly has the blood of a million on his hands from the Iran-Iraq war he instigated. The deaths in Iraq he caused likely went into the hundreds of thousands through his brutal repression, which included torture, rape and murder, sometimes at his own hands. Revenge attacks could wipe out whole towns, with everyone taken in for "questioning", or in the case of Halabja, gassed with chemical weapons.

But making claims like "Bush is many many many times more dangerous than Hussain ever was" can only be the product of a deranged mind, unless they mean in potential, which is unlikely. Bush could be far more dangerous and cause way more death and destruction than he already has. Nukes, airstrikes, biological warfare....the USA exceeds every other nation in this respect.

Wars of aggression may have been considered by the Nuremburg trials as crimes against humanity, but so is willful genocide, of which Saddam is most certainly guilty. That people can decry Bush and Blair as tyrannical in one sentence and in the next one effectively excuse Saddam by laying all the blame on the West (a very racist way of thinking, in both senses. Evil white people and naive Arabs who cannot help themselves. How disgusting) is....incredible. How can people be so deluded?

I seem to remember a General Election in 2005, where the British public had their say on who was to represent them in Parliament. And much to my personal dismay, New Labour took the majority of seats and saw fit to keep Tony Blair in the leadership role. In America too, there were elections recently. And those Americans angry about the Iraq war turned over control of Congress entirely to the Democrats.

In Iraq, you had two choices: vote for Saddam or a bullet in the head. In Iraq, anything found mouthing off about "democracy" or "equal rights" would probably find themselves detained at a military prison, where acid, knives, bullets and sticks would all be employed to make you reconsider your position and tell who you got them from. Your family may also suffer similar treatment. Then, if you were lucky, you could have a swift execution.

And you may point out that the CIA can and do torture people and MI6 are content to hand people over to countries who do and then take notes. And thats totally reprehensible and inexcusable in a liberal democracy, I agree. But Bush and Blair are not doing these to peace protesters, or members of opposition parties, or people mouthing off in coffee shops. I have yet to see Nancy Pelosi waterboarded, or David Cameron subject to extraordinary rendition (kidnapping). By all means these should be fought and resisted and are incompatible with the ideals of freedom. But they are very low on the scale compared to a monster like Saddam.

Cicero had the right idea about tyrants. "There can be no such thing as fellowship with tyrants, nothing but bitter feud is possible: and it is not repugnant to nature to despoil, if you can, those whom it is a virtue to kill, nay this pestilent and godless brood should be utterly banished from human society." Saddam was worthy of one thing and one thing alone; a bullet in the head, and another if he was still twitching. By comparing such a monster to morons like Bush and Blair is nothing less than to dishonour the many dead Iraqis who fought valiantly against Saddam for freedom and representative democracy.

Idiots who indulge in these comparisons do no aid to their movements or causes. Their rhetoric is harmful in the extreme, irresponsible and offensive.